One thing was clear-Browning had told no one of his suspicions, which were in any case no more than that. So when the poet’s body was found in a lonely lane outside the city walls-minus watch, pocket-book, cufflinks and wedding ring-the crime would be ascribed to some footpad. ‘Poor Mr Browning!’ people would say. ‘He would go for those long walks alone at night. We always did think it rather imprudent.’
Only Talenti knew enough to have suspected something, and thanks to Browning and his influential friends Talenti had been exiled to the malarial swamps of the Maremma! It all seemed deliciously ironical.
But first I had to reach the church before my enemy, who was a notoriously fast walker. The hillside was very steep, and cultivated in the traditional Tuscan manner, with rows of vines strung between olive trees running across the slope. I was therefore forced to follow one row of vines right across the field to the far edge, and then run straight downhill as fast as I dared. The moon had not yet risen, and it was a wild and perilous course I ran, falling half a dozen times, but always leaping to my feet again, eager to continue.
I had completed well over half the distance when I tripped on an olive branch, went flying forward, and fell heavily on my left ankle, which turned over. Even then I did not give up, but hobbled on somehow, supporting myself on the branch which had tripped me. But to no avail. Twice, three times I passed out from the intense pain-and when I came to the last time I heard eight o’clock chiming from the church I had hoped to reach. I had been unconscious for several hours, and Browning had long reached the safety of his home. All my hopes were dead, and I seemed destined to join them very shortly.
I shall not attempt to describe that night. Dante’s poem is a work of genius, but no one can read it now as he meant it to be read-as a Baedecker to hell. How luxuriously his damned souls seem to us to suffer, mangled by ingenious cosmic machinery, designed expressly to inflict the specific punishment prescribed for their sin, no expense spared! One might write a very different account of our hell-but no one would wish to read it, any more than you would wish to read about the night I spent shivering uncontrollably in that naked ditch beneath the bright, distant, indifferent stars.
As I lay there I thought over Browning’s final question to me: why? And I bitterly regretted not having told him to his face that the fault was all his. For Isabel’s death is the only crime I take upon myself, and that was a crime passionnel if ever there was such a thing!
Ah Prescott, what a joyful turbulence possessed my soul when I saw her again that summer day at Bagni di Lucca! How my heart cried out in mingled agony and joy, like a healed lung which starts to breathe again after years of clogged suffocation! I waxed sentimental; she was kind. I became bolder; she smiled. I made love to her; she encouraged me. What bliss!
It could not last, of course. Her idle spoilt passions changed as quickly as they came, and before long I was made aware that a rival had supplanted me in her affections. I had no idea that it was DeVere-she might be still living if I had, for contempt would surely have quenched every other emotion. But I thought she had thrown me over for some great figure from our Florentine Pantheon; for someone like Browning, in fact!
I had drunk heavily that Sunday at Jarves’s, and when I reached the villa at dusk I was in an ugly temper. Isabel was waiting for me in the large salon, softly lit by lamplight. She was in a dumpish mood; she said she wanted to return to America-she was sick of Florence, sick of Italy, sick of Europe. What? I cried-and leave me?
All my smouldering resentment burst into flame. I flung accusations at her wildly, not caring what I said so long as it hurt. I called her faithless, vile, impure; she responded in like manner, laughing in my face and calling me a bumptious empty failure, a creeping conceited nothing unworthy to lick her husband’s boots. In the end I could not endure her frightful voice a moment longer, and so I put my hands around that squawking throat, and silenced it.
Forgive me for not telling you all this before now, my friend, but it would not have done, would it? I have at least told you nothing untrue-and I am sure I have hidden the truth away somewhere, despite myself, in a description of a street-scene or something of the sort.
So Isabel was dead. Very well-but I did not intend to swing for her, after those things she had said. No, instead she should swing for me! It took very little time to think it out. I fetched rope and water from the well, carried the table over, and strung her up. No one had seen me come, and no one saw me go-and if Browning had not stuck his interfering snout in where it had no earthly business to be, the whole unseemly matter would have been passed over in a decent silence, and all the innocent people who have died since would be alive and well today. That being so I think I can justly say that it is on his shoulders, not on mine, that the responsibility for their deaths ultimately rests. I fail to see how any impartial person can possibly deny that.
When I found that my charade had been exposed, I at first hoped to avoid any further unpleasantness by leaving that knife engraved with Eakin’s name in the garden on my way to Siena.
With his alibi that scheme went for nothing, but when DeVere asked me what I had been doing in the garden that morning, I realised that he would do very well as my scapegoat. I went to see him that evening, and applied a heavy seventeenth-century silver candlestick-over whose acquisition he had invited me to exult with him-to the base of his skull. When I discovered later that it was he who had been Isabel’s latest attachment justice seemed doubly served.
Then that Saturday, at DeVere’s inhumation, came the terrible and decisive shock of realising that my new ‘friend’ Browning was treating me just as Isabel had-as a plaything to pick up and throw down as the whim took him. Was I so boring, then? Well, I would make myself interesting!
That Sunday, as I lay around my flat, I picked up the Divine Comedy. The volume happened to fall open at the Argenti episode in Canto VIII, and I was struck with the resemblance to the discovery of DeVere’s body in the Arno that morning-the more striking given the similarity in their characters.
I toyed idly with the idea, purely as an abstract notion at first. What about Isabel? At once the famous description of Francesca da Rimini and her lover, eternally restless and wind-whipped, suggested itself. Isabel, then, would be punished as Lustful-as was just. Not that she was a raging Messalina in her desires-on the contrary! But she was a prey to her shallow passions, as Dante intended: someone vain, light, inconstant, worthless. My idea appeared more satisfactory the longer I thought about it. Yes, I would make myself interesting all right-and divert suspicion from myself for Isabel’s death for ever.
The remainder of the weekend I spent planning the attack on Maurice Purdy, and on the Monday I returned to the inn where I had eaten on my way to Siena. Posing as a doctor studying hydrophobia, I bought the mad dog I had observed there and carted it in a wicker basket to Fiesole, and then after dark to Purdy’s villa. Here I put a bullet through the wolfhound’s brain, scribbled the Dante reference up on the wall and released the rabid beast to greet Mr Purdy on his return from feeding with his fat friends.
I would have been content to stop there. What happened at the Chaunceys’ was totally unpremeditated-the spirtualist’s hocus-pocus so convinced me that I decided that she had to be silenced that very night, before Isabel or DeVere could use her powers to take revenge on me from beyond the grave. Instead of going to the front door when I left, I therefore hid in a little glory-hole used to store cleaning utensils. In the middle of the night I crept out, and smothered the old lady first with a pillow, to avoid using violence to a woman-a thing I deplore. I then dislocated her neck, and arranged the corpse at the foot of the stairs with a suitable inscription clasped in its hand. In the morning, when the maid went off for help, I slipped out of the apartment and up the stairs to the next landing, where I waited until she had returned and the door was shut again before going home-only to be awakened a few hours later by the police, which I can assure you was a very unpleasant shock.
At the
Bargello I learned that all my pains-and it was no joy sitting there on a cold hard stone floor, knowing that if anything went wrong I was caught like a rat in a trap-had been wasted: Miss Chauncey had been a harmless fraud. But I was in up to my neck now, and my only thought was to keep my head above water. So when Tinker let me know that he had fathomed my secret I had no choice but to get out my well-thumbed copy of Dante again.
I willingly admit that I underestimated the ‘Reverend’ Tinker. Because the man was a patent confidence-trickster, I marked him down as a fool-but I was mistaken. He was the second person to leave the Chaunceys’ that night, so when he reached the front door and found it still locked and bolted for the ‘seance’, he was puzzled. When he heard about the mysterious death of the ‘medium’, he put two and two together with remarkable celerity. This was the limit of his cleverness, however; for instead of informing the police-which would have been the end of me-he gave me a few days to think that I had got away with it, and then called to see me and explained frankly what he knew, what he had guessed, and what he wanted. The answer was cash, in quite considerable amounts.
I agreed, of course-what else could I do? But I told him it would take a little time to have the sum he requested sent from America. He made no objection to this, and we parted very amicably. Tinker therefore had no particular reason for suspicion when he received a note the following evening from a very attractive lady whom I knew he had met shortly before. She had been ‘deeply impressed’, she said, with his ‘forceful and fascinating personality’, and urged him to come to her that evening at an address in Via Calimala and relieve the spiritual crisis which was so sorely tormenting her. Tinker was no fool, as I have said, but we all have our weak spot; mine is Literature, his was the fair sex. And so he came, and I was waiting for him, the oven already nicely glowing.
By now I had discovered the truth about Browning’s relations with Beatrice, and my interest in him was at an end. It was moreover becoming urgent to escape from the juggernaut I had set rolling before it crushed me. For this, one further victim was required; and after mature consideration I chose Mr Grant.
His death was my masterpiece, if I do say so myself. It was worked with a double, of course, as Browning finally realised. Petacco had been the porter at one of my previous dwellings in Florence; I looked him up, explained that I wished to play a Carnival prank on some friends, and offered him a coin of a value he had not seen for some time if he would assist me. He agreed readily enough to dress up in the costume I gave him and to wait for me in an alley behind Piazza Santa Trinita.
Having got Grant more than slightly inebriated, it was no problem to lead him into the boatyard, knock him down with my lead-weighted stick and tip his body into the cauldron of pitch. I then proceeded to the alley where Petacco was awaiting my arrival and we then made ourselves as conspicuous as possible in the Trinity square. As I had hoped, Talenti was there-I had sent him an anonymous threat in hopes of bringing him in person to secure my alibi-and I made sure we stayed together until Grant’s death had been reported, after which I hurried to the alley where Petacco was waiting to be paid. Having used the Bowie-knife on him, I stripped off his Carnival glad rags, which I threw down a sewer on my way to the scene of Grant’s death. The letter to Mr Browning had been very much a shot in the dark, and I was delighted to find that it succeeded better than I had dared hope. I thought it a particularly fine touch to sign the counterfeit with my own name!
And it all worked perfectly-except that Browning, with his accursed shopkeeper’s fascination with petty facts and dreary details, somehow found me out. But how much more a poet, how much greater an artist, am I! The bold conception, the reach, the range-these are mine, and mine alone. But such things count for nothing in this world, and so he wins.
Or rather, does not win! For though I should have died that night, I did not. In the morning I was awakened by a dog which barked over me until its master, an old peasant, came to see what was the matter. He fetched his son, and the two of them laid me on a ladder and carried me to the farm, where I was washed and put to bed by the woman of the house.
For the next week or so I lay in the grip of the most tremendous fever, which set my lungs aflame worse than they have ever been. By the time it subsided, the tell-tale clots of bright red had begun to appear in the matter I coughed up, and I gave myself up for lost. The peasant’s wife, however, forced me to drink certain foul-tasting infusions, which miraculously cured me. What they contained I have no idea-and would rather not know! — but in due course I was able to sit up in bed and take solid nourishment, and within a week or two I was not just well again, but feeling younger and more alive than I have for twenty years or more! Once I had recovered fully I slipped away to the place from which I presently write, on the coast, at the edge of a line of high cliffs, overlooking the sea.
I spend my days peacefully planning my future. With so much time before me, and my youth and health completely restored, my only problem is which future to choose! Meanwhile I lie gazing down at the waves breaking on the rocks far below, and the limitless expanse of open ocean stretching away to the horizon, and beyond.
This may well be the last letter you will ever receive from me, my dear friend. For who knows how reliable the postal facilities may prove to be in those lands for which I am bound? At all events, I have little more to say, except that …
25
Piazza S Maria Novella 23
Florence
Tuscany
March 11th 1855
Dear Sir,
Although Mr Booth did not directly instruct me to do so, I have no hesitation in forwarding the enclosed letter to the person for whom it was evidently destined. I say this without having glanced at its contents; my reason being simply that owing to his poor health I have carried all Mr Booth’s mail to the Post Office this last six months, and with one exception, of a commercial nature, it was all addressed to you.
Your name was familiar to me from my conversations with Mr Booth. He was extremely proud of his friendship with you, and displayed to me on more than one occasion his signed copy of your work on Theoretical and Practical Ethics. I am conscious that I have the advantage of you here, for there is no reason to suppose that Mr Booth has ever mentioned my name in his letters. Nor have I any wish to bring myself to your attention now; if I now take the liberty of doing so, it is solely in order to explain why it has fallen to my lot to break these painful tidings to you.
As you must know, Mr Booth’s health had been steadily deteriorating for some considerable time; indeed, the pulmonary consumption from which he suffered was, I understand, diagnosed before he left America. While the progress of the disease was to some extent retarded, and its effects mitigated, by the favourable climate here, the outcome was never in the slightest doubt
Mr Booth and I had been neighbours for several years, but lacking an occasion to speak, we remained strangers until my cat found her way into Mr Booth’s suite on the floor below mine one day last year. This trivial event gave rise to an acquaintance which gradually ripened into something like friendship as we came to know each other better-and as Mr Booth’s failing strength caused him to depend more and more upon my assistance.
Although it was only in the last few months that he became completely bed-ridden, he scarcely ever went out, and never received company, even during the period when this remained a possibility for him, preferring to immerse himself in his beloved books. I doubt whether he knew half a dozen people here, all told. It must be said, indeed, with all due respect, that he could be a difficult man. I do not believe that I am abnormally sensitive, but on more than one occasion I have been sorely tempted to break off our relations, so deliberately offensive and wounding have I felt his behaviour to be. This is the more puzzling, in that he was extremely touchy and proud himself. If in the end I always relented, it was simply because I could not bear the thought of him sitting all alone downstairs, knowing he was dying.
It often happens that chronic mala
dies appear to take a turn for the better shortly before they run their course; such was the case with Mr Booth’s. This illusory improvement coincided with, and may even have been occasioned by, the arrival in Florence of Mr Joseph Eakin, the Philadelphia steel magnate. He and his wife were very much the talk of the town last season, and their comings and goings were reported in all the prints. Very much to my surprise, Mr Booth intimated that he knew one or both of these persons, whose social orbit nevertheless appeared so very different from his own. When I enquired why in that case he had not been to call on them, he replied that he would do so directly his health had improved further-for he still cherished hopes of a complete recovery.
But that day unfortunately never arrived. The young Mrs Eakin succumbed to a fever, and shortly afterwards Mr Booth’s own health went into a rapid and irreversible decline, and from that moment on he was confined entirely to his room. An Italian girl was hired to nurse him, while I myself called upon him several times each day.
Late last night I heard him coughing and moaning aloud in a way that greatly distressed me; I therefore dressed and went to see if I could assist in any way. I will always be glad that I did, for I found that the nurse who should have been with him was unaccountably absent, and the bed was in a frightful state, pulled about by poor Booth’s tormented writhings, the sheets and pillows stained with blood he had brought up in his struggle to breathe.
I stayed with him until the fit passed, and then did my best to make him comfortable. But as I was about to retire, his hand suddenly shot out of the covers and gripped my arm, and with a cry of terror he begged me not to go. I therefore fetched a chair, and sat down by the bed to keep him company.
After a time his hand grasped my arm again, but gently this time; pulling me towards him. When I was quite close, he whispered, ‘I have been happy!’ The manner in which he said this was extremely singular: as though it formed part of a conversation in the course of which someone had ventured to affirm the contrary.
A Rich Full Death Page 21
